Affordable housing – let it be a reality not fallacy

DURING the major festivals in this country, we see the authorities conduct vigorous enforcement activities on various price-controlled food items. This is to prevent unscrupulous traders from exploiting the situation by increasing prices of what are deemed as essentials. Sometimes they even secretly stock up such items to create artificial shortages. It is outright profiteering.

We often read about wayward traders being taken to court simply for failure to display prices. Whether such measures breach our free market policy may be open for debate. The bottom line is that it does curb profiteering to a certain extent. Having said that, we would now like to refer to the present scenario in the housing arena.